Radio Australia: September 12, 1970

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Bob Purse, who shares the following recording and notes from his excellent website Inches Per Second:

Somewhere along the line I managed to acquire a whole bunch of someone's tapes of Australian shortwave broadcasts from the 1960's and 1970's. My un-listened-to tapes in my basement have gotten jumbled around several times over the years, so a lot of collections which were once stacked all in one place are now scattered amongst the stacks down there. And so it is that this week, I found yet another tape of Australian shortwave recordings. The recordings only include the day of the week and the date, not the year, but based on those days and dates, and the contents of the broadcasts, I am surmising the first of these to be from September of 1968 and the other to be from nearly exactly two years later.

The 1970 tape [included here] is considerably clearer in sound quality [than the 1968 recording posted last week].

Radio Australia: September 23, 1968

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Bob Purse, who shares the following recording and notes from his excellent website Inches Per Second:

Somewhere along the line I managed to acquire a whole bunch of someone's tapes of Australian shortwave broadcasts from the 1960's and 1970's. My un-listened-to tapes in my basement have gotten jumbled around several times over the years, so a lot of collections which were once stacked all in one place are now scattered amongst the stacks down there. And so it is that this week, I found yet another tape of Australian shortwave recordings. The recordings only include the day of the week and the date, not the year, but based on those days and dates, and the contents of the broadcasts, I am surmising the first of these to be from September of 1968 and the other to be from nearly exactly two years later.

The 1968 recording starts off difficult to hear and grows progressively worse - this is not an easy to listen to tape - such are the vagaries of listening to short wave broadcasts. The 1970 tape is considerably clearer in sound quality.

Radio Australia: March, 1968

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Bob Purse, curator of the website Inches Per Second, who shares the following recording and notes:

Periodically, I have shared parts of the large collection of shortwave recordings, most of them of Australian programming, which I picked up... somewhere, at some point. I've shared most of it, at this point, but have a few tapes left. I held off on this because the quality is fairly poor, then near the end becomes abysmal, but I thought I should share it, since there is an audience for these recordings. The newscast heard here makes it clear (specifically, the golf results, among other stories) that at least part of this tape is from the second week of March, 1968.

First Lady of Guatemala Thanking Ham Radio Operators for Assistance in 1976 Earthuake

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Bob Purse, who shares the following recording and notes from his excellent website Inches Per Second:

Next up, an hour long tape which is sort of peculiar. It starts off and ends up normally enough - just a couple of guys playing guitars - some instrumental duets, some songs with vocals.

20 minutes into it, though, a man starts speaking, and introduces a recording of a shortwave broadcast of a speech by the first lady of Guatemala, thanking Ham Radio operators who assisted the country during the then-recent (1976) earthquake. Then follows that shortwave recording, and then the man comes back and shares that he will be providing some recordings of his recent performance with another guitarist.

The earlier segment does not appear to be a "live" recording, and at one point, an organist (with one of those beat-box built in drums) joins them. But after the "thank you speech", it seems that we're hearing a club or bar performance. There's no applause, but there is talking in the background.

I guess what I find peculiar about it is that the sender put the "interesting" short wave broadcast right in the middle of the tape, in between highlights of his performance. That strikes me as a weird choice.

Radio Australia: Circa 1974

The Shepparton transmitter site of ABC/Radio Australia

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Bob Purse, who shares the following recording and notes from his excellent website Inches Per Second:

For those of you who like it, here are two more entries in the series of Australian Shortwave [Note: Recording 1 was published on the SRAA last week], which I've been parceling out from time to time since not long after this blog began. I'm fairly certain the person who recorded these programs lived somewhere in North America, because all of the shows (up until this posting) were from episodes directed at that continent. But additionally, I wonder now if the person lived on the west coast of North America, because he or she made an effort (on the same tape as a show from 9/5/74), to capture Australia Shortwave during a program broadcast towards Asia and the South Pacific. The quality of the connection during that portion is, as you'll hear, quite poor, but it did come in, at a level and quality that I would guess it wouldn't have been received in the eastern half of the continent.

Radio Australia: September 5, 1974

Radio Australia’s Shepparton TRansmitting Station

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Bob Purse, who shares the following recording and notes from his excellent website Inches Per Second:

For those of you who like it, here are two more entries in the series of Australian Shortwave [Note: Recording 2 will be published on the SRAA next week], which I've been parceling out from time to time since not long after this blog began. I'm fairly certain the person who recorded these programs lived somewhere in North America, because all of the shows (up until this posting) were from episodes directed at that continent. But additionally, I wonder now if the person lived on the west coast of North America, because he or she made an effort (on the same tape as a show from 9/5/74), to capture Australia Shortwave during a program broadcast towards Asia and the South Pacific. The quality of the connection during that portion is, as you'll hear, quite poor, but it did come in, at a level and quality that I would guess it wouldn't have been received in the eastern half of the continent.

Radio Australia: Circa Spring of 1968

The Shepparton transmitter site of ABC/Radio Australia

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Bob Purse, curator of the excellent Inches Per Second audio archive and blog. Bob kindly shares the following recording originally made on reel to reel tape. All of Bob’s recordings are lost and found sound, so the only information he has for each recording are the notes included on tape labels and boxes. If you can identify the date or any other information about this recording, please comment.

Bob notes the following about this found piece:

[…]I found yet another Shortwave broadcast in my collection to pass along. In this case, it is again Australian Shortwave, from Spring of 1968. An I will acknowledge right off the bat that the recording quality is abysmal. It starts poorly and gets worse and worse as it goes along. This is actually why I hadn't shared it before. But I thought the time was right to offer it up, terrible quality and all.

Swiss Radio International: Circa April 26, 1968

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Bob Purse, curator of the excellent Inches Per Second audio archive and blog. Bob kindly shares the following recording originally made on reel to reel tape. All of Bob’s recordings are lost and found sound, so the only information he has for each recording are the notes included on tape labels and boxes. If you can identify the date or any other information about this recording, please comment.

Bob notes the following about this found piece:

This [recording is] from the spring of 1968. [It] is a recording of broadcasts from Switzerland. The sound quality goes in and out here - it's never great, which is often the case with these shortwave recordings, but it's almost all listenable.